Poll: The IRS and partisan politics

Here's another indication that many equate political beliefs with ethical behavior despite much evidence to the contrary.

Nearly every modern presidential administration has seen partisan opponents get special attention from the IRS, but an OC Political Pulse poll found that broad swaths of both Republicans and Democrats think it's the other party that more often engages in such hanky panky.

A quarter of the 146 Republican respondents said it happens more under Democratic administrations and one in five of the 70 Democratic respondents said it happens more when a Republican is in the White House.

Just 15 percent of Republicans and 13 percent of Democrats said it rarely or never happens.

Democrats were far more likely to excuse the current brouhaha, in which some conservative groups apparently have been targeted by the IRS. Nearly a quarter of Democrats said such abuses "may happen, but the current instance was inadvertent or appropriate."

Franklin D. Roosevelt's frequent use of the IRS for political retribution included a U.S. senator and a former treasury secretary, according to an Associated Press roundup. Dwight Eisenhower targeted members of the Communist Party, John F. Kennedy took aim at conservative non-profits, and Jimmy Carter's IRS chief ended the tax-exempt status of some private Christian schools on the basis of racial discrimination.

Under Bill Clinton, the IRS audited the conservative Heritage Foundation and the National Rifle Association. And the NAACP was audited after its leaders urged George W. Bush's defeat during his 2004 reelection campaign.

Richard M. Nixon went after those on his "enemies list" and once responded to critic by saying, "What's he trying to do, say that we can't play politics with the IRS?"

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